The song "The World Looks Red/The World Looks Black" contains lyrics written by frontman Michael Gira that were used in the Sonic Youth song "The World Looks Red" in 1983 the album Confusion Is Sex; the song's music is new, with no relation to the earlier version.[2] Swans and Sonic Youth both developed in the early 1980s post-punk/no-wave scene of New York City, and Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore was an early member of Swans appearing on the live album Body to Body, Job to Job (recorded 1982-85, released 1991). The title track for The Glowing Man has previously been referred to as "Black Hole Man"[3] and "Black-Eyed Man". The song "When Will I Return?" was uploaded to YouTube on May 27, 2016.[4]

Prior to its appearance on The Glowing Man, "Frankie M." was part of Swans' live sets as early as 2014, its length and arrangements differing each time it was performed.

Upon its release, The Glowing Man was widely praised by music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from critics, the album received an average score of 81, based on 22 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". Writing for Exclaim!, Griffin J. Elliot called the album "a meticulous exercise in the band's streamlining their abstract sound, taking what they've done before and playing it under a newer, grander spotlight."[9] Saby Reyes-Kulkarni wrote for Pitchfork, "The love in [Gira's] music is as terrible as it is beautiful, a wrenching act of spiritual determination. Swans make this sound effortless, though, in a fitting end to a remarkable chapter of their career."[11]